Loading Screens
by Katseester
Summary: Motorcity lives like its citizens.


Cross-posting from AO3 because ehhhhhhh why not.

* * *

Mike sometimes regrets leaving the bright, pristine, safe world of Deluxe. He sometimes thinks that maybe, just maybe, he should have stayed up there. (Killing innocent people and shrugging off his conscience. What does it matter? He'd be safe.) The people of Motorcity are living in the shadow of a monster, one that will eventually squeeze the lives out of them.

Because Motorcity is a burnt-out, grimy slum of a city. It's dark, dangerous, and always in that thin, fragile margin between keeping upright and crumbling to the ground. The people are exhausted. They're scared. They're helpless.

He sometimes wonders if any of this is worth it. If all of his effort, _everyone's_ effort, will be completely negated when Kane finally crushes them for good.

(Because surely they can't keep this up forever. It's defeat or be defeated, kill or be killed, and Kane won't just stop at beating him down. One of these days everything is just going to _snap_ and it will be the end-game. Defeat or be defeated. Kill or be killed. There's no middle ground.)

He wonders if he made the right choice, turning his back on Kane. Because there's that small, nagging sense of self-preservation that gives him headaches and whispers just behind his ears that he's completely fucked himself.

* * *

He's doing a job one day - another delivery for Rayon, but specifically requested _on foot_, of all things - that requires some fancy (and not-so-fancy) acrobatics and quick thinking, but he gets it done alright. There's a moment when his hand slips on some sheet metal and he slides about thirty feet down a sharply-inclined roof, one that's conveniently very high up and rattles beneath his boots. He almost rockets right off the edge but his fingers, scrabbling for purchase, catch onto the dipped gutter and he's left hanging above what's surely a pointy and painful fall. It takes some effort to pull himself up; the gutter is old and rusted like the rest of the city, emitting gutteral groans and creaks as he lugs himself up and over, bending and threatening to break and send him hurtling into the yawning darkness below.

His friends' voices are chattering in his ear, tinny and panicked and _really_ not helping.

It's almost comforting when he's finally back on the somewhat solid rooftop, if only because the sighs of relief are followed by silence.

"I knew I should've gone with you," Dutch reprimands when he returns, hands scraped almost raw.

"Nah, it was fine," Mike shrugs it off, turning the tap and waiting for the air bubbles to free themselves from the plumbing with a few loud pops and clunks before cautiously dipping his hands into the flow. He bites back a hiss.

"Mike, you were two seconds away from falling to an untimely and painfully pointy death," Julie reminds him, crossing her arms. "Any more pressure and that drain pipe would have snapped." She catches sight of his ginger attempts to wash his hands and sighs. "Here, let me see that."

He manages to keep a straight face for most of the procedure but he can't hold back a couple hisses of pain as she dabs antiseptic over a couple of the deeper scrapes.

"Keep still!" She scolds after he flinches away for the third time.

"Easy for you to say," he mutters, reluctantly laying his hands out in front of him again.

Ten minutes and a box of band-aids later finds everyone seperated; Julie has to get home before she's missed, Texas needs some modifications done to his car, Dutch is dragged unenthusiastically along. Chuck is the only one left with him in the garage, leaning against Mutt and absent-mindedly picking at his fingernails. He's been sending accusing glances in Mike's direction ever since he got back, though, strangely, he hasn't piped up once. He chooses now to advance on Mike, a set to his shoulders that's decidedly angry and jaw clenched like he wants to hit something.

"Look, I know what you're going to say," Mike intones, standing his ground, holding up his hands but thinking better of it and shoving them into his pockets when he sees the numerous bandaids, "but - "

Chuck hugs him so tightly he's almost left gasping for air.

"Dude, what's wrong?" he asks, though he has a pretty good idea what's up by this point, thinking about punctured lungs and rattling breaths.

"You're an idiot," Chuck grouches, headbutting his shoulder lightly.

"Hey, I'm safe, aren't I?" he chuckles, but he grasps back just as hard.

"That's not what you're supposed to say," Chuck mutters into his shoulder. "You're supposed to apologize for being a reckless prick and making me _worry_ like that, and then you're supposed to kiss me."

"Hmm, I don't know about that," Mike shoots back, grinning just a bit, "will you accept my apology?"

"Please just shut up," Chuck groans, then kisses him anyways, long and slow, hands reaching up to touch Mike's face, to make sure he really is there.

"I'm sorry," Mike says when they both lean back, just a little breathless, "for being a reckless prick and making you worry."

"Good," Chuck affirms.

"Yup, that was a close one," he supposes, thinking back to the creaking, flexing gutter.

"Oh my god, would you _stop_?" Chuck bemoans, and then kisses him again.

* * *

Mike took a pretty bad fall once, about half a year back. He miscalculated a jump from Mutt to 9 Lives, during the middle of a battle that left them airborne more often than not as they jumped from freeway to broken freeway. The machine Kane had sent after them was pretty persistent; anything they threw at it just seemed to make it mad, and by the time they were out of options it was raging behind them, thundering up the concrete and making it difficult to drive through the shuddering shockwaves.

Mike had devised a plan to defeat it, foolproof at the moment but pretty stupid and extremely dangerous in retrospect. He wanted to lead it over the edge of the Detroit Doom Jump, down into the chasm below. Nothing could survive that, right?

Except it was kind of impossible to make the jump without the Supercharger.

So Mike was going to drive Mutt over the edge - but not with him inside. He would ditch his car and jump to Julie's, they would stop last second, and hopefully the evil robot would be stupid enough to plunge after Mutt.

The idea hurt, but at this point Mike saw no other options. Besides, once this whole debacle was over they could try and salvage the car, right? (That is, _if_ they could get to the bottom of the gorge. And if the car wasn't a smoldering heap of deformed metal by this point.)

He'd already thrown Chuck to Texas, and the two were hanging back with Dutch as Mike and Julie shifted their cars into top gear, screaming up the insanely steep ramp, KaneCo robot in hot pursuit.

Mike had everything under control. He kissed his baby goodbye and locked the steering wheel into place, grabbed the skull gear shift and slid out the window and onto the roof. Spotting 9 Lives rolling up even to him, he gave Julie the thumbs up and, upon her return of the gesture, jumped.

Except at that moment Mutt lurched on an uneven part of the ramp and sent him careening forward instead, flailing between his car and Julie's. He hit the side of Julie's car hard, ricocheting off and impacting with a terrible crack onto the concrete, skipping and hitting again, and again, and again as he plummeted down the 80 degree slope, arms and legs flopping and limp like a ragdoll's. He heard the screech of tires and his friends' screams in his ears, staticky and disjointed, felt the way his body crunched and folded as he rolled and rolled, wondered if this was it.

He skidded to a halt at the bottom of the slope an infinity later, crumpled and barely conscious, struggling to breathe through an acute pain a little below his sternum, dimly aware of the metallic tang filling his mouth and bubbling over his cracked lips with each breathe he gurgled out.

He blacked out after this, and woke up a while later with tubes up his nose and a beeping noise grating itself into his ears.

Three broken ribs, and an arm and a leg each. A punctured lung. Internal bleeding. He was lucky to be alive, but Mike wasn't anything if not stubborn.

"You look like hell, dude," Chuck said when he first saw him, eyeing the dark bruises and jagged scrapes covering Mike's face, the white casts bundling his arm and leg, the way Mike breathed shallow and careful because he couldn't otherwise. Mike almost laughed, almost said "no shit," but he found himself short of breath and couldn't make the words out anyways.

Chuck stayed with him when he wasn't busy. He talked to him when Mike couldn't, any attempts pitiful, choking, breathy sounds that were coughed up from the back of his throat, then talked with him when he could, trying a few jokes when he felt Mike could laugh without re-stabbing his lung. Sometimes he just sat and held Mike's hand. One day he stared straight at Mike and said "I was so scared, dude," and left it at that. Mike didn't ask him to elaborate, just nodded and closed his eyes.

Julie's visits were mostly silent. She blamed herself for what happened, and told him so, despite his protests that none of them could've predicted a bump in the road. She remained guilty-faced and somber though, eyes downcast and arms crossed.

Recovery was long, painful and frustrating, but he got through it somehow and the rest of the Burners managed to keep Kane at bay until he was well enough to fight again.

* * *

That night Chuck slips into Mike's room when he thinks he's sleeping.

"Hey," Mike says as Chuck is tiptoeing across the room, and smiles when he hears a muffled squeak.

"Dude, don't _do_ that to me!" Chuck hisses, all pretence of stealthiness gone.

"Can't help it, you make it too easy," Mike teases, but shifts over when Chuck flops down into the bed, getting an elbow in his face. "Ow!"

"Not sorry," is the muffled response from the pillow next to him.

They wake up tangled together; Mike always was clingy. There's a wet spot on his chest where Chuck has been drooling in his sleep, and he thinks he might have Chuck's hair imprinted on his face, but as he squints in the less-darkness of the morning he's pretty content with his current situation.

"Eurgh," Chuck says when he wakes up and has to peel his face off of Mike's shirt. Mike silently agrees, but refrains from vocalizing this.

"C'mere," he says instead, nudging at Chuck's head until it lolls sideways and Chuck, still half-asleep, mumbles something unintelligible.

He kisses Chuck, lazy and slow like the dust particles spiraling in the morning less-darkness, and he can feel Chuck really waking up now, pressing himself up a bit to match his height on the bed and frowning when he feels Mike's legs twisted around his own.

"Gross," Chuck complains when they break it off, making a face at the morning-taste in his mouth.

"We're allowed to be," Mike says, resisting and failing the urge to muss Chuck's already-messy hair.

If there were any screeches to be heard that morning, let it be said that they were not uttered by a lady.

* * *

They went out for a ride one night, maybe not even a month after Mike had arrived in Motorcity. They drove until they were past the oppressive plates of Deluxe, out until they could see an actual sky with actual stars and feel an actual breeze through the rolled-down windows. There wasn't much to see, though, just the wild growth of a long-dead forest and a line of concrete that had been at one point a road.

"I kind of love it out here," Chuck said when they stopped, perched on the roof of Mutt and staring out at the forgotten constellations. "It reminds me of what we're - well, _you're_ - fighting for."

Mike, not sure what was worth saving about a dead forest and crumbled highway, just shrugged.

"I mean, it's not the greatest out here, let's be honest," Chuck snorted, gesturing widely at the stark landscape surrounding them, "but at least it's free, right? That's gotta count for something."

"I guess it does," Mike said, smiling just the faintest bit and lying back to take in more of the sky. Chuck did the same, pillowing his head with his arms crossed behind.

Something began to grow between them that night, something that was exciting and unfamiliar and honestly quite scary, but Mike didn't know it. Didn't know it until weeks later when he looked at Chuck and it suddenly made _sense_, the touches and smiles and tight feeling of companionship that he'd never experienced before. The glances exchanged that became increasingly confusing and thrilling all at once, making his stomach flop and tongue-tying him until he was just a big, flustered mess.

Chuck turned and grinned at Mike, a little confident and a lot hesitent, not exactly sure what it was they just shared but not willing to shy away from it either. Mike couldn't help but grin back, reaching over to punch him lightly just below the ribs.

(There might have been some screaming and flailing that followed, but to Mike it's all lost in the rose-tinted nostalgia.)

* * *

They try to ignore the whistles (courtesy of Texas) and knowing looks directed at them when they shamble into the garage together sometime just past noon.

"Did you have a nice sleep, ladies?" Dutch inquires, rolling his eyes and then ducking beneath Whiptail's hood.

Chuck, face bright red, mumbles something resembling "yes, thank you" as Julie passes a palm across her face and Texas waggles his eyebrows.

"So, breakfast! What's there to eat?" Mike asks, dragging Chuck over to Jacob's food supply.

"I managed to sneak down some normal food this morning," Julie says, pleased with herself. "So you've got a choice between cinnamon bagels and bran muffins. I made sure Texas didn't eat them all." She shoots a glare at Texas, who shrugs innocently.

"Hey, you never mentioned any normal food to me," Dutch says, reappearing from under the hood briefly to pass an accusing glare over the group.

"Oh, sorry," Julie says, "but we've still got plenty left. Enough for the three of you, anyways."

"That's debateable," Mike mutters to Chuck, who is by this point well into his third muffin.

"Hey," he protests, spewing muffin crumbs everywhere.

Everyone takes a moment to stare before bursting out into carefree laughter.

* * *

Mike still isn't one hundred percent, completely sure that he made the right choice.

But he looks at the broken, dirty streets and the drawn, pale, tired faces of the people and he sees _home_. He sees a civilization that's struggling to survive, a civilization that _needs_ him. That _he_ needs. He sees the good memories and the bad, the trust and friendship he has established and that he wouldn't trade for the world. He sees hope.

He sees all of this and his regret is gone. (For now.)

Motorcity lives like its citizens: fast, free, and without apology.


End file.
